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Last week, Gabe had to attend exactly one day of a seminar in L.A., so I took off a few days to join him on an extended, though brief, California visit. Since we only had two non-travel, non-work days, we decided to skip trying to see the L.A. sites and just spend our time at the beach. I love ocean-swimming, and I blew off temperature warnings. I’ve been in the Gulf in December and a St. Louis pool in November, and I relish the shock of diving headfirst into cold water and swimming until my body acclimates.

But oh, man. The Pacific Ocean is COLD.

Me in my granny swimming suit, trying to work up the courage to get in the cold water.

Between beach-time, we saw a bit of Venice by walking around our neighborhood, looking for food and drinks. We stayed a few blocks off Abbot Kinney, named the “Coolest Block in America” by GQ in its April issue. There is little I can reasonably afford on that street, apart from food, and even that’s pushing it ($9 juice?! You get to take the jar it’s served in with you, and it’s very good, but $9 juice…). Between this hipster strip and the beach, there is the lovely, wild California plant life taking over sidewalks, and there is the Venice Boardwalk, full of vendors, tourists, homeless people, and just… strangeness. My most memorable Venice Beach characters include the large, dreaded man in an oversized purple, plush top hat rapping about passers-by; a turbaned man rollerblading while playing electric guitar; and at least two different men singing their requests for money so they could buy marijuana and booze (to the tune of “Jingle Bell Rock”: “Jingle bell, jingle bell, help me get drunk.” Not even seasonably appropriate.)

Hip bike in front of a hip store on the coolest block in America.

On Friday, we avoided the boardwalk mayhem by renting bikes from J’s Rentals. For $20 each, we got to keep our snazzy beach cruisers for the day (until 8 p.m.), allowing for a leisurely bike ride to Santa Monica. The madness of the boardwalk stops right around where the boardwalk ends, although it picks up again at the Santa Monica Pier. It’s mostly just tourists there, though. We biked up to the Annenberg Community Beach House, but turned around without visiting, opting for the ocean instead. What we really wanted was a Mai-Tai, but sadly, there are limited bar options right on the beach in Venice and what we saw of Santa Monica. You can find beer, wine, and champagne, but no real beach bar. And by real beach bar, I mean plastic chairs and wooden tables in the sand. There is none of that, and instead of Mai-Tais, we had ice cream in the shadow of a ferris wheel. That was good, too. It’s a bad idea to drink and go swimming in the ocean.

Just before we left to go home, a friend and her husband drove us around the Venice canals. Abbot Kinney, the guy who developed Venice, created it with the original in mind, so there are canals and homes squished in around them. You can walk along the water, and if you can get to that neighborhood without a car, do, as parking looked to be a nightmare.

Other Venice/L.A. randomness:-the bus costs A DOLLAR

-motorcycles drive between lanes while the cars are stopped in highway traffic. This seems like a terrible and dangerous idea, motorcyclists

-LA likes Selena. I heard 3 Selena songs in less than 24 hours. This is good, because I like Selena, too

-Want an amazing donut? Drive out to Glendora and visit the Donut Man. Get the strawberry donut. I was skeptical. I was wrong (here’s a photo gallery from the LA Times)

-The most bizarre CVS I’ve ever seen:

I will have to get back to L.A., though, because I saw next to nothing of it. Seriously. Not even the Hollywood sign. But I got my beach on.